From the Editor: The
following story appeared in the July 24, 2003, edition of the Chicago Tribune.
Remembering our struggles in the past decade to rid American entertainment of
blind characters like George in the ABC program "Good and Evil" and
Mr. Magoo as revived by the Disney movie studios, readers should find the information
in this article refreshing and positively remarkable. We can only keep our fingers
crossed that this trend will continue and that blind actors get a real chance
to make their mark in programming and films as well as in commercials:

Guy and girl enjoying themselves
at a party. They're good-looking, hot, in their twenties. Guy excuses himself
and makes his way through the crowd. Oh, but wait. He's got a white cane; he
must be blind. As he begins to wash his hands in the bathroom, he gently feels
around the sink and faucet. Back with his date, he tells her, "You should
see the bathroom."

That's
a thirty‑second TV commercial for Kohler, which, it would seem, makes
bathroom fixtures so unusual you don't need to see them to appreciate them.

Kohler
is not alone. With little precedent TV seems suddenly populated with blind people.
And not in regular programming. Three current commercials for major corporations
feature visually impaired characters as central figures. What's more, the ads
show these people in the social swim--looking good, in control, even exceedingly
hip. It's what spokesmen for the visually impaired have been seeking from the
media for years: inclusion. Yet it's difficult to imagine the ads were created
solely as a bow to social consciousness. Advertising is, above all else, about
selling products and making money.

So
why would a faucet company, a car maker (Pontiac), and a liquor brand (Crown
Royal) suddenly decide that blind people are the way to capture viewers' attention?

The
answer, in part, is that the first order of every day at an ad agency is to
find unusual ways to purvey its clients' wares. By using a blind person--someone
not commonly seen on TV-- the agency would be pushing the boundaries of conventional
advertising, making the product stand out from all others. (Little did each
realize that two other agencies were tapping the same premise.) As it turns
out, in each of these cases creative minds were also trying to illustrate the
exquisite sensory pleasures provided by the product--pleasures that go beyond
the visual.

Jonah
Bloom, executive editor of the industry magazine, Advertising Age, thinks
the ads are right on target. "A blind person in an ad is a useful vehicle
for getting a message across. You are immediately telling the viewer that there
are other senses involved, other pleasures to be derived that aren't visual.
How else can you so easily convey that message?"

Sanjay
Sood, assistant professor of marketing at the Anderson School of UCLA, says
he can't remember another time when blind people have been featured so prominently.
And even if it's not a conscious attempt to break down barriers, he says, the
results are just as beneficial. The barriers fall, to some degree, just by showing
blind people in the mainstream of life instead of showing them as stereotypes.
"Maybe it even adds to the credibility of the product," Sood says.

"It
used to be an unwritten rule to only show the exact types of people you're targeting
and to idealize them--so that viewers never saw anything that wasn't ideally
happy, ideally beautiful, ideally perfect. But in the quest for attention, advertisers
are willing to push the envelope much more than they used to." That said,
the result of these ads has been exhilarating to some who are sight‑impaired.
Their representation in the media has been so dismal and unrealistic for so
long, they say, that many are thankful to finally be portrayed more accurately,
even if only to sell a product.

In
fact, the American Federation [Foundation] for the Blind presented its 2003
Access Award to the Wisconsin‑based Kohler company "for cleverly
offering a realistic and positive portrayal of a blind person in its television
commercial," even though the winning ad did not use an actual blind actor.
Kohler did, however, appear to have its finger on the pulse of today's young
generation of blind people.

The
ad shows blind people as folks who can party, dance the night away, even look
hot and cool if they choose to. Blindness precludes none of that, of course--although
the media still tends to portray blind people as isolated, fearful, helpless,
imprisoned in an endless night. Think Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman:
an older guy who sits alone in his room, mad about being blind.

The
ads are a step forward but far from enough, says Tom Sullivan, a blind actor,
author, and musician who is also an avid skier and golfer. People with visual
disabilities, he says, have been almost totally excluded from film and TV. When
they are hired, he says, it is to play roles in which their blindness is the
focus of the plot. "The real breakthrough will come when a show like `The
Practice' hires me to play an attorney, and my blindness is never mentioned,"
he says.

"It's
all so ridiculous and antiquated," agrees blind actor Rick Boggs, who was
a television spokesman for Airtouch Cellular for two years. Among his gripes
are that blind men are usually presented as bland, straight‑laced, naive,
and not very masculine. Boggs says he isn't wildly enthusiastic about the new
commercials, especially the two that didn't use blind actors. At the Airtouch
auditions, he says, "they interviewed about 150 blind actors before choosing
me. So don't tell me there's no pool of talent."

David
Crawford, senior vice president of GSD&M, in Austin, Texas, which created
the Kohler ad, says he would have used a blind actor, but the spot was done
in a whirlwind during the last commercial actors strike. "We had to film
in Canada; we had a lot of last‑minute logistics to take care of. Casting
a blind actor was seriously discussed" but not implemented.

How
did they come up with the idea? "We dreamed up dozens of ideas to pitch
to them, each one playing off the company's motto: `The bold look of Kohler.'"
One of the team members thought it would be neat to show that the design is
so individual you can tell it's a Kohler just by touching it, Crawford says.

Graham
Button, creative director at Grey Global Advertising in New York, says that
when blind actor Peter Seymour auditioned for the Crown Royal commercial, "he
was so obviously right, so handsome, debonair, self-assured--and such a great
actor, we would have given him the job whether he was sighted or not."

The
ad, which takes place in a bar, features Seymour--a blind guy so cool, so perceptive,
and so hip that he's an object of envy as other guys watch him order and sip
Crown Royal while he observes the action. Somehow he knows that two great-looking
women are admiring him, and he says, "I think the one on the left likes
me."

Button
says the ad is successful because it uses a person with heightened sensory awareness
to convey the exquisite pleasures offered by the product: the taste, the smell,
the tingle as it's swallowed.

And
in somewhat the same vein Chemistri, the marketing firm that does Pontiac car
ads, used an actor playing a blind person to illustrate the particular joys
of driving a Grand Prix.

Brian
Durocher, senior vice president at Chemistri, explains: "We asked ourselves,
how do we illustrate the sheer pleasureful impact of driving this car. How do
we illustrate the Pontiac tag line: `Fuel for the Soul'?" Their solution:
A commercial filmed in the desert with a man and woman in dark sunglasses, driving
full throttle through the sand. The woman is at the wheel, obviously enjoying
the sensation. She stops the car, opens the door, and extends her cane. That's
when you realize the driver is blind.

Durocher
says the commercial is successful, he believes, because it initially expresses
the joy of driving that car. Then it stops you short when you realize the driver
is blind.

And
then it hits you again when you imagine the sensations that driver experienced
that have nothing to do with eyesight: the car's power, its sensitivity, its
strength.

Durocher
says he, too, would have used a blind actor--but the driver had to be able to
"make her mark" during the filming so the car wouldn't stray off camera.
He says he consulted with the Michigan Association for the Blind on every aspect
of the commercial.

"One of the first
things they told us is that driving was a common fantasy for the visually impaired
and blind people. And most of them have tried it--in safe areas, of course."
The association approved the ad, said it helped shatter stereotypes of the visually
impaired, and public feedback has been positive, Durocher says.